As America turns its back on free trade, emerging markets forge ahead

14
November
2017

By Roger Mark, Product Specialist

A silver lining of the Trump administration’s protectionist agenda has been that emerging market (EM) governments have, on the whole, reaffirmed their commitment to freer trade. Reassuringly, they recognise the positive influence of open markets in driving EM economic growth over the last three decades.

While Trump stole much of the headlines from the APEC meeting over the weekend, 11 countries (including Malaysia, Chile and Peru) finally agreed to push ahead with a revised version of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)*. This strongly signalled remaining participants’ commitment to trade liberalisation, despite Trump withdrawing from the agreement during his first day in office. Even without US involvement, the scale of the prospective agreement is significant – 500 million people and over US$10 trillion in aggregate GDP. That said, without US involvement, the economic gains are more modest. A recent paper from the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) highlighted the economic benefits of TPP (ex-US) would be limited to approximately US$150 billion, or less than half the benefits of the agreement with US participation. However, if the five other Asian countries that have shown an interest in the agreement were to join then the economic benefits would approach those of the original TPP according to the PIEE analysis.

Unfortunate delay in RCEP agreement, although deal still likely

Also at the weekend was a modestly disappointing delay to the other large putative Asia-centric trade agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)**. A ministerial meeting at the side-lines of the Asean summit in Manilla decided to push back the timeline till 2018 (there had been hopes it could be signed this year).

A trade deal does, however, still seem very likely. RCEP is regarded as a lower quality trade agreement than TPP (limited coverage of services & investment, and weaker labour and environmental provisions), however it covers a much larger GDP base (4 of 10 largest global economies are in RCEP). PIIE estimate global income gains of around US$300 billion and the economic benefits could be significantly higher if countries like Japan and Australia manage to succeed in getting some services provisions into the agreement. Moreover, both agreements can facilitate a framework for further rounds of gradual trade liberalisation (possibly with US involvement under a more receptive administration).

Emerging markets have a key role to play in global trade growth recovery

Admittedly both trade agreements have a long way to go, although the progress to date shows that the world is moving ahead with trade liberalisation despite the US flirting with protectionism. This should help to underpin global trade growth over time. As Chart 1 shows, the rate of trade expansion has been lacklustre since the financial crisis – partly reflecting cyclical factors like the sluggish pace of global economic growth, but also structural factors such as the shortening of global supply chains (particularly in China).

The stalling of the Doha round of global trade negotiations and lack of progress on regional trade agreements has also likely played a significant role in the trade slowdown. Indeed, just a year ago, considerable gloom existed among trade economists. Now, fresh progress on trade agreements, driven in part by emerging markets, could help to underpin a longer-term re-acceleration in trade growth (which has already started to pick-up somewhat with the cyclical upswing in global economic activity). Thus, while there are significant concerns around the future of Nafta and Korea-US Free trade agreement, clearly the US administration is not going to be able to reverse the long-run trend towards greater trade liberalisation, and that EM governments recognise the importance of open trade for their economies.

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